And then I realized that someone was with me in the room. I had left strict orders that I was not to be disturbed, but I was too weak now even for anger. I opened my eyes.
Teleri was sitting beside my bed, slumped a little in the chair, as if she had been there for some time. In her lap she held a bowl of porridge. It still steamed, and the scent brought back memories of the Hall of the Priestesses on a frosty morning, when we had all gathered to eat our daymeal around the central fire. It was this scent, I realized, that had brought me back from my vision, the fragrance of porridge with honey and dried apples as they made it in Aval on.
“Your servants dared not trouble you,” she said softly, “but I will not add to the sins I already bear that of letting you die when there is something I can do.”
I reached out for the bleak security of despair, but my stomach was growling. Apparently my body had decided to live, and it was no use arguing. With a sigh, I held out my hand for the bowl.
“When you are well,” said Teleri, “I will leave you. I am going back to Avalon. I should never have left it, and if Dierna casts me out, I will wander until death takes me in the Mist between the worlds.”
That was what I had been doing, I thought grimly, and without the trouble of travelling to the Summer Country, but it seemed to me that I had lost the right to criticize.
“Come with me, Helena. I do not know your story, but it is clear that you are a priestess of Avalon.”
I swallowed a bite of porridge, considering. Had I been forgotten already? Ganeda might well have been bitter enough to erase my name from the rolls of priestesses. But perhaps the explanation was simpler.
“When I dwelt on the Holy Isle I was called Eilan,” I said slowly, and saw her eyes widen.
“You are the one who ran away with a Roman officer! Not since the days of the first Eilan who was High Priestess at Vernemeton has there been such a scandal. But Dierna said that you were kind to her when she was a little child, and always spoke well of you. Is your Roman dead, then? Your servants do not speak about him.”
“Not dead, except to me,” I said through stiff lips. “He is Constantius Chlorus, the father of my son Constantine.”
Teleri’s eyes filled with tears. “I was married to Carausius, who was a good man though I could never love him, and to Allectus, whom I did love, though he was good neither for Britannia nor for me.”
“This was Dierna’s will?” In the end, it would seem that Ganeda had trained her grand-daughter well.
“She wanted to bind the Defender of Britannia to Avalon.”
I nodded, understanding that this was the same hope that had originally sent me out to seek Constantius.
“Dierna is a great priestess, however badly things turned out for me,” Teleri said earnestly. “I am sure that she would welcome you—”
And then attempt to use me, all for the good of Avalon, I thought bitterly. Once, I might have had as good a claim to be Lady of the Holy Isle as she, but I had been away too long, and though Constantius had abandoned me, his son, whose last letter lay even now on the table beside my bed, had more need of my counsel than the priestesses of Avalon.
“To Dierna, and to her only, you may say that I still live, and that I send my love to her. But I think that the Goddess may still have work for me in the world.”
A week later, when I came down to breakfast, they told me that Teleri had gone. She had what was left from the money I had given her to buy clothing, and all I could do for her now was to ask the blessing of the Lady upon her journeying.
Spring had come to Londinium. The Tamesis ran high with rainfall and new leaves were springing from every branch, welcoming the returning birds. Life returned to my limbs, and suddenly I needed to be outside, walking through the pastures and along the stream that divided the city. At other times I would go past the forum and over to the baths, or farther still, to the Temple of Isis that had been built near the western gates to the town. With each day I grew stronger, and less content to sulk at home, brooding on my misery. I missed the patter of paws at my heels, but as soon as I began to recover, Hylas had died, as if he felt his duty was now done. He had lived a long time for a dog, but I could not bring myself to get another.